The BioWare Blog announceMass Effect 3: Earth, following up on recent indications that more content is coming to the action/RPG sequel with news that this free multiplayer DLC pack will be released next week:

When is Mass Effect 3: Earth available?
Mass Effect 3: Earth is available on July 17th for Xbox 360 and PC worldwide. For PlayStation 3 owners the pack will be available on July 17th in North American and July 18th in Europe.

What is included with Mass Effect 3: Earth?
Firebase Rio, Vancouver, and London are available to play on as soon as Mass Effect 3: Earth is downloaded. The new weapons, characters, and equipment are available as rewards inside existing Reinforcement Packs.How much does Mass Effect 3: Earth cost to download?
Mass Effect 3: Earth is available to download at no additional charge.How do I get new items in Mass Effect 3: Earth?
As with the Resurgence Pack and Rebellion Pack, new items will be unlocked in existing Reinforcement Packs. Make sure to look out for promotional packs and weekend challenges for other ways to unlock the content.

Quinn wrote on Jul 13, 2012, 18:30:I envy you for still wanting a SP DLC, Jerykk. Shepard died, the ME universe I knew and loved changed to a point it's no lpnger recognizable and nothing I can do about it anyway. The EC DLC did nothing but spit on ME's grave.

If it was up to me, the world would never again talk about ME or create anything of ME. I'd let it get forgotten asap.

The ending was pretty bad but I still enjoyed the rest of the game and series. If the DLC takes place before the ending, I wouldn't really have any problems playing it.

I envy you for still wanting a SP DLC, Jerykk. Shepard died, the ME universe I knew and loved changed to a point it's no lpnger recognizable and nothing I can do about it anyway. The EC DLC did nothing but spit on ME's grave.

If it was up to me, the world would never again talk about ME or create anything of ME. I'd let it get forgotten asap.

Every time they announce they have another multi-player booster pack nearly ready and free, I'm surprised.

The first time I figured they were doing it to generate good will to counter the ending hubub. Now I wonder if people actually buy the treasure chests with real money. I guess I don't mind a business model that is free for the vast majority, but charges the stupidly impatient and wealthy.

I've been a fan of Killing Floor, and I love ME3 multiplayer. It is a bit more forgiving (your teammates can revive you even when you are down, you don't have to worry about losing your guns, you can level up quite fast, etc) and has more weapons/skills and play-style variety. The random reward system works great to have players test various tactics.(I didn't like everyone goes for the obviously stronger classes and weapons in KF.)15-20 mins per game is nice compared to 30 mins for KF as well.I don't know any other "horde" style PC game with this much fun and, dare I say it, depths. I was expecting a half-assed multiplayer mode tacked on the single player game; it was a great find.

My only beaf with the game is the lack of dedicated server and a fewer squad mates. lag is unbearable sometimes.

I was able to play the MP side of this again recently and good god does it get repetitive. The missions seems to last a few min too long. By wave 10 I'm just shaking my head, "Are we done yet?!" It can be fun in short bursts but it just seems to drag on too long every match.

Have they added any new enemies? It's been all new maps I believe? Maybe I just need to switch my characters between matches so it's not the same tactics every match.

Yeah, this is so not my thing. I got bored after a couple missions. Oddly, I really enjoy the combat in single player, simple as it is. Probably because I treat single player as a game where I can just chill out and demolish some bad guys without any pressure. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

What? People play this? The combat in me3 was terrible compared to any other shooter out there. Why would you play this instead? I tried it and it feels exactly like any generic mission in the SP game...

I don't really find it that repetitive, since there's a ton of classes, tons of syncs, and tons of different ways of playing. The only repetitiveness in the entire MP is the three enemy factions, which I've now already fought against like a thousand times each, so it'd be nice to see a new one at some point (though I understand that's a massive undertaking, just from a design standpoint alone.)

The bugs are really irritating, especially since patch 1.3, for which we had to wait 3 months, was supposed to fix a bunch of them and wound up fixing exactly ONE, with all other bugs still happily in place.

I still enjoy playing it from time to time.

The unlock system is a bunch of shit, but I guess if you allowed players to buy everything they wanted, they'd just get the few character classes they want and the few weapons they want, and that'd be it. There'd be no further incentive for credits. So I can see the idea behind it from a design perspective.

I guess I'll be the naysayer then, I found this extremely derivative and ho-hum. It's pretty much a direct rip of the Horde mode in Gears of War and gets so repetitive as to be mind numbing. They had a ton of opportunities here to patch in other game modes, more enemy types and other significant content additions but instead it's basically console style map packs. The netcode has all sorts of weird issues with the hitboxing and melee hit detection too. The item pack gambling component is borderline sleazy and the MP is essentially just grinding in the most obvious way. They might as well have added a massive EXP bar with no end. I guess a lot of people like to unlock things for the sake of unlocking them though judging by its unexpected popularity.

Free is great I guess but I think in this case I would have rather paid for some DLC that actually extended the MP in a meaningful way.

Wheee more free stuff for what I think is an excellent MP system. Sadly, this means there will now be approximately 100 different things that are a Rare card, and so trying to get the one you want becomes an excercise of having to buy 90 trillion Premium Spectre Packs.

Which is of course what EA wants, since it makes it more attractive to buy them with real money Bioware points.

Still, more content is always cool. I really wish they'd try to develop a new enemy, though...

Edit: Apparently, the new Platinum difficulty is being tested and is on its way. That'll be... fun